01 January 2016

Investment Review - December 2015

I've just compiled the latest Combined Portfolio position, as shown in the graphic below.  Click on it for a larger image.




I've included the column from the previous post for comparison, as usual, but there's also an extra column from this same time last year, i.e. at the end December 2014.

I've shown this because, in spite of the quite poor market performance over the year, and in particular the rout in commodities stocks in which I'm heavily overweight, all is not doom and gloom and the year-on-year overall position doesn't actually look bad at all.  


In terms of my benchmark, i.e. the 'Growth against the Mar-13 Baseline' entries, the pot has increased over the year from 46.6% to 68.4%.  Although this is predominantly due to the addition of lots of new money, the surprising thing is that several of the mutual funds I hold have posted very decent gains over the past year.

On the downside, my purchase of Zincox Resources In February has turned out to be a complete disaster and the holding is now effectively worthless.    Despite thinking I'd bought in at the right moment, after they'd funded & built the facility, and actually started making a saleable product (see my post on the perils of AIM stocks), the fall in the Zinc price has made the company loss-making and forced them to hand over 90% of the assets to their creditors.  A last minute attempt to borrow further cash, to prevent this doomsday scenario from happening, failed in just the last few days.


Stock / Fund Sales in the Period
In October, Alkane Energy was the subject of a cash-only takeover at 36p per share and so I was forced to crystallise a loss of 22.4% over the purchase price.  This was unfortunate, because I still liked what this company did and I would have been happy to hold it for a lot longer.

Stock / Fund Purchases in the Period
During the period, I subscribed to the Standard Chartered 2-for-7 rights issue at £4.65 per share - in for a penny.....

I also increased my holdings in BHP Billiton in early December, at a price of £6.90 gross per share.


As ever, the waters can be choppy - be careful out there...

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